Boycott slams 'one-day clowns'

Sydney, 2014/Jan/06 00:50:00

Text Size

Former England batsman Geoffrey Boycott came down heavily on Alastair Cook's men after they were blanked 0-5 in the Ashes by Australia and blamed the support staff for "over-complicating" professionalism.

Boycott was critical of the way England's batsmen caved in against Mitchell Johnson's hostile bowling and said the visitors seemed to have forgotten the art of batting in Test matches. The likes of Cook, Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell, men with proven credentials in international cricket and thousands of runs between them, had a torrid time Down Under.

"They forgot the principles of Test match batting. They batted like one-day clowns. The batting was as bad as anything I have seen from an England side. We have stopped playing Test match innings.

"Somehow we have to get our batsmen to remember how to bat for long periods of time. At the moment if they do not hit a four for three balls they play an outrageous one-day shot. All our players play so much Test, one-day and Twenty20 cricket that they find it impossible to adapt to each format," Boycott wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald.

ECB's move to send across dossiers on specific diet requirements for England's squad had drawn jibes from the Australian media before the start of the series and predictably Boycott took more potshots at England cricket bosses for focusing on "frivolous luxuries".

"Over recent years England have employed more backroom staff believing it makes them more professional. In fact, they have over-complicated professionalism. We have coaches for everything. Psychologists, team analysts and an 82 page diet book that made us a laughing stock," Boycott wrote.

The England board has decided to back Cook and coach Andy Flower after the debacle while both men insisted they would stay in the job and take the responsibility of seeing the team through a rough phase. Flower has already warned his wards of more "pain" in the near future but Boycott fears England might forget the horrors in Australia and pretend that nothing had happened.

"There is a real danger England will sweep this 5-0 defeat under the carpet, pretend it never happened and it was nobody's fault.

"They will carry on with the same captain, coach, players and planning. Well that is not good enough. The players have been mentally dissected and broken. There was no fight or spirit left in them and they were totally humiliated by an Australian team that is good, but not great," he wrote.

Cricket Australia High performance director, Pat Howard has candidly admitted that he took a back-seat and allowed Darren Lehmann, the coach of the Australian team to implement his ideas during the recently concluded Ashes series.